The Orion Nebula, also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976, is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. It is 1,344 ± 20 light-years (412.1 ± 6.1 pc) away and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light years across. It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula.

The Orion Nebula is one of the most scrutinized and photographed objects in the night sky and is among the most intensely studied celestial features. The nebula has revealed much about the process of how stars and planetary systems are formed from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers have directly observed protoplanetary disks and brown dwarfs within the nebula, intense and turbulent motions of the gas, and the photo-ionizing effects of massive nearby stars in the nebula.

Acquiring and processing details

The night of February 26th 2021, I took a picture from the Orion Nebula since a long time. I was able to take a few hours of data before M42 settled behind the horizon again. This picture is made of 2,2 hrs of HaRGB data and a 5 minute exposure for the core using 15 sec. sub-frames. The integration was again done in Astro Pixel Processor and the final processing in PixInsight.

• Date: February 26 - 2021
• Integration Time: 2.2 hrs
• Telescope: TS Photoline 130/910 x 0.79 at f5.5
• Mount: Skywatcher EQ6-Synscan Go-To
• Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Cool
• Filters: Ha, RGB

Acquiring and processing details

The night of February 9th 2022, I managed to take some data from the Orion Nebula through the rare open sky of this winter season. It was also a good moment to test my Optolong L-Pro filter (as it was half-moon phase) together withe my QHY168C camera. In order not to 'overblow' the core and the bright stars as usually happens, I decided to only take 60", 30" and 10" exposures. The integration was again done in Astro Pixel Processor and the final processing in PixInsight with some finetuning in Affinity Phone together with the annotations.

• Date: February 26 - 2021
• Integration Time: 2.2 hrs
• Telescope: TS Photoline 130/910 x 0.79 at f5.5
• Mount: Skywatcher EQ6-Synscan Go-To
• Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Cool
• Filters: Ha, RGB

Acquiring and processing details

This data is taken March 3rd 2022, but reprocessed at January 9th 2023. The integration was done in Astro Pixel Processor and the final processing in PixInsight with some finetuning in Affinity Phone together with the annotations. Major improvement in PixInsight is the payed add-on BlurExTerminator, it's a real game changer using this in my processing flow.

• Date: March 3rd - 2022
• Integration Time: 0.6 hrs
• Telescope: TS 6" f4 Photo Newton
• Mount: Skywatcher EQ6-Synscan Go-To
• Camera: QHY168C
• Filters: none